Trying to be a good recycling citizen...

[sparr0.livejournal.com]

If I've determined that removing a certain food residue (peanut butter from the walls of a jar, dried cheese from a paper to-go container, etc) is not something I am invested enough in being a good person to do... should I put it in the trash or recycling?

Comments

[pakoo.livejournal.com]

fill a dirty jar with white vinegar and water. microwave thirty seconds and pour out--works every time

[sparr0.livejournal.com]

I'm getting a lot of replies here with processes for cleaning out the jar. I don't have enough information to make a value judgement in this regard. How much energy/money/entropy am I saving by recycling a single plastic jar, vs how much a jar of vinegar and 30 seconds of microwave time costs?

[ratatosk.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the replies, though made entirely in good faith by people genuinely trying to be helpful, have been kind of tangential. Nobody has said how clean they think is fair or reasonable, which is what you were asking.

Here's my personal answer, speaking as someone who is meticulous about recycling, but who is also bothered by wasting water on it:

Disclaimer: I grew up with an unreliable well (to the point where we sometimes had to use paper plates in order to conserve water), so I have never fully acquired the mindset of someone who has always had access to cheap, plentiful, perfectly clean water.

Personally, I will only wash recyclables if one squirt or so with the sink sprayer gets it to a point I consider reasonable (e.g. a yogurt container). I could never do the soaking in vinegar or microwaving that people are suggesting. I think if you need to apply a chemical or use electricity, you should consider just putting it in the trash.

Also personally, my threshold for how much food I think it's reasonable to leave in there is somewhere around the same point where I'd feel guilty for wasting food, either for failing to scrape out a reasonable final serving of peanut butter from a jar, or for having let that much of something go bad. Because Somerville has a rat problem, my threshold for reasonable is higher for sealed containers (e.g. peanut butter jars with the lids on vs cans).

In another place I lived, with a private trash and recycling company, we asked them about their request to wash the recycling, and they said the sole purpose of that was to avoid attracting wasps, because they were worried about their workers getting stung. So I suspect recycling processes (as well as attitudes towards what is "reasonable") vary enormously, and the optimal recycling method for Somerville might be pretty specific.

Obligatory tangential comment:
You also mentioned trying to guess at energy saved by recycling. I'm not convinced recycling reliably saves energy. I'm pretty sure it reduces landfill usage, though. And it seems like a no-brainer to me from a conservation perspective to recycle things like fluorescent light bulbs, or anything else that contains a completely non-renewable resource. But overall it seems insanely hard to know how much of a difference you are making.

[masswich.livejournal.com]

Yes you're right, our answers are all a little off-topic. I think the point I was trying to make was: wash them as much or as little as you want (within limits.) Whatever it gets for you to recycle the item rather than throw it away. If they can use it, they will. If not, they will clean it or throw it away. People don't need to think too hard about it, just recycle things rather than deciding to throw them away because they are too dirty and you don't feel like washing them out.

The centralized cleaning they do at the recycling facility is presumably more efficient anyway.

Where I live, we pay for our trash bags, so there is all the incentive in the world to recycle. With free trash collection like Somerville, that isn't an issue.

[xuth.livejournal.com]

The energy saved by recycling aluminum vs manufacturing from raw materials is relatively huge. Aluminum production is one of the largest uses of electricity in the world and recycling aluminum requires about 5% of the energy of producing new. Back when aluminum cans were heavier and thicker walled you could say that not recycling a 12 oz beer/soda can was equivalent to filling it half full of gasoline and burning it. Now, manufacturing enough aluminum for the current lighter beverage cans from recycling vs new materials saves the equivalent of about 2.5 oz of petroleum (this assumes 34 cans per pound and 32 barrels of oil saved per ton of recycled aluminum but the numbers seem to be relatively consistent from varied sources) so in almost any case this is worth the time and water.

Steel, paper and plastics provide less but still significant energy savings (look at http://www.epa.gov/osw/education/pdfs/toolkit/tools-m.pdf for an idea of how much) and in general this is worth it as well.

Note that all of this is on top of the environmental savings of not having the waste go to landfills.

For what it's worth, recycling in Somerville is still only optional, but in many communities (and possibly Somerville in the future) recycling is mandatory and actually punishable for failure to do so.

[ratatosk.livejournal.com]

That's a nice link -- thank you!